The Closet of Possibility
by Books of Change
Summary: Harry Potter accidentally turns 221B's cleaning supply closet into a magical portal that leads to worlds that reflect the deepest, most desperate curiosity of a person. Sherlock, unfortunately, didn't know that when he opened it to take out the vacuum cleaner. Sherlock, HP, Canon Sherlock Holmes triple crossover; ASIM compliant
1. Sherlock, part I

**The Closet of Possibility**  
>by Books of Change<p>

**Summary**: Harry Potter accidentally turns 221B's cleaning supply closet into a magical portal that leads to worlds that reflect the deepest, most desperate curiosity of a person. Sherlock, unfortunately, didn't know that when he opened it to take out the vacuum cleaner. Sherlock, HP, Canon Sherlock Holmes triple crossover; ASIM compliant

**Warning/Additional Notes**: This story is based on another story I wrote: _A Study In Magic_. All you need to know is that Harry Potter was adopted by Sherlock and John when he was nine (and they had another kid when Harry was thirteen). The HP timeline was moved up and Sherlock timeline was moved back to make this work.

* * *

><p><em>From the notes of J. H. Watson, MD<em>  
><em>Late of the Indian Army<em>

It is years since the incidents of which I speak took place, and yet it is with diffidence that I allude to them. No amount of discretion and reticence would allow me to make the facts public without risking accusations of insanity or worse. But now, with due suppression of details and light-heartedness of narrative, the story may be told in such a fashion as to entertain and enlighten. The reader will excuse me if I conceal dates or any other fact by which he or she might construct timelines.

We were having a quiet evening in our rooms when the incident happened, as a tempestuous gale battered the twin windows of our lodgings. Holmes was enjoying his evening pipe and a pamphlet on medieval music, and I was deep in a recent treatise upon surgery. Amidst the muffled sounds of the sobbing and moaning winds outside, we heard the door to our lumber room open on its own accord. Both Holmes and I glanced at it, and, to our utter astonishment, found a strange man staring incredulously back at us from the opening.

The man was rather over six feet, and had the same thin, rangy, loose-limbed build of Holmes, though not as excessively lean. His eyes were an eerie pale blue-gray, slanted and rather feline in shape, and they possessed a piercing quality that again reminded me of Holmes. The rest of his features were a study in contrasts: A mass of dark curls framed his long pale face, which possessed exotic cheekbones, and the most lavishly accentuated upper lip lent the man an air of effeminacy; but his fine retroussé nose, thick eyebrows and strong jaw line were absolutely masculine, and gave his whole expression an air of alertness, decision and determination.

The three of us regarded each other for a full minute, too stunned to speak. Then the stranger, whom I had then just realized was only in his trousers and shirtsleeves with the top two buttons of his shirt undone, muttered something I did not catch, turned heel and closed the door behind him.

Holmes and I immediately sprang to our feet and wrenched open the door to the lumber room. For a few moments we stared in silent amazement at the familiar sight of ancient newspapers stacked chin high within in the small space, the strange man nowhere in sight.

Dazed, both Holmes and I staggered away and resumed our seats by the fire.

"I can tell from the look on your face that I must quickly discard my hypothesis that we have been exposed to a hallucinogenic substance," said Holmes, breaking the silence. "Two men may hallucinate separately, but they are unlikely to see the same illusion."

"So you saw the man, too."

"As clearly as I see your good self. Yet both his entrance and exit defies human reasoning. Even if there is a secret passageway in our modest abode which has somehow escaped my detection, the man bore no sign of having braved the vile weather outside and appeared as honestly surprised to see us as we ourselves were to see him. There is also no apparent purpose to his brief appearance, except perhaps to shock and astonish. However, our guest seems to have an idea of who might be behind this."

"I'm afraid I did not hear last his words, if that is how you know our stranger has a clue."

"He said, 'damn it, Harry' with the kind of exasperation one who has suffered many such similar incidents may express. One wonders how Master Harry has accomplished this feat when he is but a boy."

"How do you know Harry is a boy?"

"Our unexpected visitor wore a plain gold band on his left ring finger. He is a married man, then, of several years judging from the signs of wear. The inevitable question to follow is the existence of children. Young master Harry has the necessary degree of knowledge and intelligence that allows him to devise the means in which he made a stranger temporarily appear in our lumber room. The stranger's youthful appearance makes one think the existence of grown children are unlikely. Of course, Master Harry may be a relative or older family member, but the creases on our guest's clothes tell us he has been in his shirtsleeves the entire day, had not donned a tie for the same length of time, but no one commented on his deplorable state of extended undress. If we hypothesize that the devisor and perpetrator of the prank is Master Harry and the victim is our guest, then Master Harry is a boy, probably our unexpected guest's oldest son, which we can infer from the way he addressed him by his Christian name."

"How extraordinary!" said I. "If your reasoning is true, then young Master Harry's skill must surpass that of the famed escapologist Houdini; even he would find it difficult to replicate what happened here."

"I agree; and as you undoubtedly noticed, there was no sign of preparations and there were no contraptions within our storage space," said Holmes. "It was, in fact, entirely as we have last accessed it, albeit with more dust. Should we ever see our guest I again, I would love to question him how Master Harry did it."

The discussion on the matter ended on that note. I turned to bed shortly afterwards, leaving Holmes to brood over the perplexing if harmless problem. In the dreamy landscape between slumber and consciousness, I heard a door open and close from the floor below. I assumed it was the sound of Holmes entering his bedroom.

I awoke to a chilly morning. The pale sun roused above the jungle of man-made structures that had been huddling helplessly against the imperious storms of the night before. The windows still bore the remnants of last night's assault of elemental forces, dripping muddy water droplets like blood from a wound. Our landlady had stoked a good fire and laid out our breakfast by the time I came downstairs. Holmes was already seated at the table, smoking his morning pipe.

"Another visitor came last night," said Holmes as he poured the coffee. "It was a young man, no more than eighteen years in age, tall and lean of stature, and a lightning-shaped scar on his forehead. He also wore the most absurd combination of clothes I've ever laid my eyes on: form-fitting blue laborers' trousers on his legs, a grey undershirt and red cardigan on his torso, round spectacles on his face, and black shoes with white rubber soles and laces on his feet. He opened the lumber room door from the inside, peered at me with apprehension rather than surprise, and shut the door behind him before I could reach him. When I opened the lumber room door again, it was exactly as we found it last evening."

"No new additions?"

"None whatsoever."

"Did our new visitor say anything?"

"He said 'oops'; a rather mild self-admonishment considering the magnitude of the circumstances."

I munched on my toast thoughtfully.

"Could it be," I started, "that these series of incidents are—"

I didn't continue, as the lumber room door opened from the inside again and the visitor we saw last evening stuck out his head from the crack. This time, he was wearing a blue dressing gown, black trousers that had very narrow legs, and a shirt that was a deep plum-colour. Like the evening before, the top two buttons of his shirt were undone and he lacked a tie and proper waistcoat. He also glowered at us with frank annoyance before turning to the unseen space behind him.

"_Harry_!" the man called out in a rumbling baritone, "It's still doing it!"

Holmes leaped out of his chair and caught hold of the door before our strange visitor could vanish again. Our visitor tried to fight against his iron grip, but Holmes wrenched the doorknob out of his hand and flung the door completely open. To my utter astonishment, the lumber room revealed nothing but piles of ancient newspapers again.

"How am I supposed to go home now?" our visitor complained. Though a stranded man mysteriously deposited in a stranger's lumber room by means unknown, he didn't look at all alarmed, but merely irritated.

"It would be unwise to let an intruder go free," said Holmes.

"Wrong," said the visitor rudely. "It's clear that—"

He visibly stopped. Our strange visitor exchanged his previous irritation for an introspective look quite alike the one I often found on Holmes's continence when he worked on a baffling case.

"Time and date?" asked the stranger abruptly.

Holmes supplied the information.

"Interesting; and you are?"

"My name is Sherlock Holmes. The gentleman over there is my friend and colleague, Dr. Watson."

Our nameless visitor let out a snort, an involuntary sound of mirth. He directed his piercing eyes at me for a second, and then returned his gaze at Holmes.

"Even more interesting," said he, giving Holmes a crooked, one-sided smile. "_My_ name is Sherlock Holmes. Now, don't be like that; surely you don't think you're the only Holmes to be named Sherlock in the world?"

Holmes thought for a little.

"It appears to me," said Holmes, "that you to know a great deal more about the current situation than I. Would you be so kind as to explain?"

"Explaining is one thing, believing is entirely another," the other Mr. Sherlock Holmes replied. "May I sit?"

"By all means."

The other Mr. Holmes made himself comfortable in the wickered chair. There he surveyed our sitting room, taking in the bear-skinned hearth rug, Holmes's chemistry set and framed portraits like a foreigner who had never seen such things before.

"I will first assert," said the other Mr. Holmes, "that I am a man from a far off future."

Holmes and I merely nodded. Had we not seen the man vanish and reappear twice in an impossible manner, we would have consigned this claim as a statement of a madman.

"You don't seem very surprised," Mr. Sherlock Holmes from the future remarked.

"You have evidence to prove your claim, I'm sure," Holmes demurred.

"Of course," said the other Mr. Holmes. He reached into his blue dressing gown and pulled out a small, palm sized device. It was rectangular in shape, and had a metal strap running through its sides in the middle like a hoop on a barrel. He pressed the indented button on the bottom of the wider flat surface, and a photograph that retained all of the original subject's colours appeared on the black screen, with a time and date clearly writ on the top in white letters. As we stared, mesmerized, the other Mr. Holmes swiped his thumb across the lower portion of the coloured photograph. To our utter shock, a keypad of numbers beneath four white boxes smoothly rose from the bottom of the screen, with a new message 'Enter Passcode' replacing the time and date.

"What is this witchcraft?" I wondered aloud.

"Not witchcraft, just technology," said the other Mr. Holmes. He swiftly pressed four numbers on the screen with his thumb. Each time he touched a number, a black dot appeared on one of the four white squares. Once all four boxes were filled, the screen changed again and showed a gray screen dotted with water droplets, and several brightly colored squares were neatly arranged in rows, four squares per row, each square uniquely designed and bearing a tiny label in white letters underneath. The other Mr. Holmes tapped the square labeled 'Camera', and the screen changed again to briefly display a gray vortex that opened to reveal another screen, this one replicating whatever that was directly in front of the device.

The other Mr. Holmes raised the device so the back would face us.

"Smile," he said. He then did something that made the device manufacture an odd clicking noise. He lowered the device again and showed us the screen.

I couldn't help but let out a cry of shock when the screen revealed a coloured photograph that captured Holmes' and my stunned expressions. The picture was virtually indistinguishable from reality; it was as though device had frozen that moment in time and kept it within its confines.

The other Mr. Holmes looked at our faces and laughed.

"This is only _one_ function of this device, which is called a smartphone. It can also act as a dark lantern, a hand-held reference library, and a … phonograph machine, I believe you call them. It can also make telephone calls and send text messages. A personal telegraph station and post office as it were, without the inconvenience of actually writing a letter or learning Morse code. Speaking of which…"

He pressed the physical button on the lower part of the device. The screen changed to show the rows of squares in the gray background again. The other Mr. Holmes tapped the green square bearing a white circle that was labeled 'Messages'. The screen afterwards showed a long list of names, several grouped in one row. Mr. Holmes selected the list item that bore the names 'Harry Watson, John Watson'. The list screen moved to the left, and showed a new screen that had many square boxes with rounded edges, light grey boxes on the left and blue boxes on the right, interspersed with sentences writ in the center that bore a date and time. All the squares bore messages of varying lengths. As I read through them in order, I realized the messages were a typed dialogue that was held between Harry Watson, John Watson and Sherlock Holmes. All of the blue squares on the right were labeled 'Sherlock Holmes', while the white squares in the left were either labeled 'John Watson' or 'Harry Watson', depending, presumably, on the responder. The last white square on the bottom was from Harry Watson, and the message said: WHERE R U?!

The other Mr. Holmes tapped the long, white bar with half-circles at each end on the bottom part of the screen. The bar rose up and revealed a miniature typewriter keyboard. Mr. Holmes started to type out a message using only his thumbs with a rapidity that bespoke mastery.

_My Victorian ancestor namesake's London flat_, the other Mr. Holmes typed out. Periodically, a tiny white box bearing blue letters would appear above the word the other Holmes was typing, bearing a word that could possibly be the one he was typing. The other Mr. Holmes tapped the blue oval that had the label 'Send' after he finished typing. The message on the white bar smoothly transformed into a new blue square with rounded edges, diagonally to the lower right to the last white square.

A new white square appeared a few seconds later, bearing a new message from Harry Watson:

_r u serious?_!

The message exchange proceeded in such a manner, Mr. Holmes typing out messages and Harry Watson—presumably the Harry the other Sherlock Holmes had mentioned—responding almost instantaneously, using deeply colloquial language and acronyms.

* * *

><p><strong><em>Harry Watson<em>**:

_Y did u want to see the Victorian  
><em>_a__ncestor you were named after?_

_**Sherlock Holmes**:_

_Was only thinking of taking out the  
><em>_vacuum cleaner to hoover the test-tube  
><em>_shards _

_Why did you turn the cleaning supply  
><em>_closet into a time machine portal?_

_**Harry Watson**:_

_Was trying to __duplicate__ the Mirror of  
><em>_Erised, actually, with added ability to  
><em>_interact with images. I thought it didn't  
><em>_work, so put the mirror in the closet_

_Mirror may have exploded._

_**Sherlock Holmes**:_

_Next time you have to discard __an enchanted  
><em>_item, __obliterate it_

_**Harry Watson**:_

_Fine__. _

_Trying to figure out how to get __u back.  
><em>_ETA unknown. Will txt updates  
><em>

_what does your ancestor look like. Send  
><em>_photos._

_**Sherlock Holmes**:_

_[miniature copy of Holmes and my photograph from earlier]_

His friend's name is Dr. Watson.

_**Harry Watson**:_

_OMG OMG what is this I don't even  
><em>_seriously what is air I can't even  
><em>_BAHAHAHAHA_!

* * *

><p>"Step-son?" inquired Holmes after the other Mr. Holmes put away the smartphone.<p>

"Adopted son," Mr. Holmes corrected. "He chose not to take my surname."

"Age?"

Mr. Holmes supplied the information.

"Dear me, and I was thinking young master Harry was twelve at the most," said Holmes.

"You _were_ missing a vital piece of data," said the other Holmes, another wry smile on his lips. "Namely, that I'm from a different century altogether. That would put a huge spanner in your deductions. It is not exactly an inference one can glean and consider under normal circumstances."

"Only a madman would consider it with all due seriousness without prompting," Holmes agreed. "So that's that. I presume you are, for all intents and purposes, stranded until Master Harry figures out how to reopen the portal?"

"Yes. It shouldn't take him that long. He already accessed here once, and he knows how to do it again."

"Excellent," said Holmes, wriggling in his seat. "Now I believe you know what I'd like to do while you wait."

"Ask questions," said the other Holmes, "How could anyone resist?"

-oo000oo-

**Final Notes**: Not an update to ASIM proper, but nevertheless situated in that universe. Sorry, but the whole studying thing messed up my brain _a lot_. Having said that, the stuff my brain comes up with scares me sometimes.


	2. Sherlock, part II

**The Closet of Possibility**  
>by Books of Change<p>

**Summary**: Harry Potter accidentally turns 221B's cleaning supply closet into a magical portal that leads to worlds that reflect the deepest, most desperate curiosity of a person. Sherlock, unfortunately, didn't know that when he opened it to take out the vacuum cleaner. Sherlock, HP, Canon Sherlock Holmes triple crossover; ASIM compliant

**Warning/Additional Notes**: This story is based on another story I wrote: _A Study In Magic_. All you need to know is that Harry Potter was adopted by Sherlock and John when he was nine (and they had another kid when Harry was thirteen). The HP timeline was moved up and Sherlock timeline was moved back to make this work.

-oo00oo-

We spent the next half an hour asking questions to one another. We first established there were no familial ties between Sherlock Holmes of the current time and Sherlock Holmes from the future— at least, none of which we could reasonably trace without a detailed genealogy book. In case a client or a member of the police would visit us before Master Harry could resolve the portal problem, Holmes instructed Mr. Sherlock Holmes from the future, who insisted that we call him Sherlock, to claim he was his cousin.

"You have a considerable number of uncles and aunts?" asked Sherlock.

"Not a common thing anymore in your time period, I take it?" remarked Holmes, shocking me more than a little at the implications of this statement.

"We don't have as many children. I think the average birth rate is around 1.85," Sherlock replied.

Sherlock then inquired into Holmes's resume. He appeared deeply amused when Holmes told him he was a private consulting detective.

"So when the police are out of their depth, they consult you?" he asked.

I felt annoyed at his ironic tone.

"He stands alone in Europe as an investor of crime, both in his gifts and in his experience," I said tersely.

Sherlock's amusement lingered, "Famous?"

"Thanks to my chronicler here," said Holmes.

Sherlock smiled broadly, but didn't comment on the matter.

We quickly moved to questions related to the future, particularly those related to scientific advancements. It soon became clear the difference in scientific knowledge of our time and that of our guest was simply too vast to cover. Moreover, Sherlock simply assumed his gadgets worked and never thought it necessary to inquire how they worked in depth, very much like the way Holmes and I assumed telegraphs and plumbing worked and felt betrayed whenever they did not. Thus Sherlock couldn't explain very well the mechanics behind a smartphone, let alone a time-jumping portal.

"It astonishes me that things so miraculous and marvelous would fail to draw a sense of wonder," said I.

Sherlock shrugged his shoulders.

"Overexposure and over-familiarity breeding contempt," he said. "It doesn't help the Market introduces a new gadget every quarter."

That moment, our doorbell rang. Holmes and I both remembered Sherlock's appalling state of dress, completely unfit for polite company, so we wasted no time rushing Sherlock into Holmes's bedroom to find suitable attire for him. Much to our consternation, we discovered Sherlock, while an equal to Holmes in height, had a much healthier and broader frame.

"Mr. Holmes? Dr. Watson?" inquired the voice of Inspector Stanley Hopkins of the Scotland Yard

I quickly reentered the sitting room to greet the young Inspector. After shaking hands, I told Hopkins that Holmes was in and would meet him shortly. As we waited, I found myself in a bit of a conundrum. On the one hand, I devoutly hoped Sherlock would remain hidden, lest his lack of everyday knowledge of my time land him into trouble. On the other hand, I couldn't help but desire to see how he would react to the current-day police.

About five minutes later, Holmes and Sherlock rejoined us at the sitting room. Sherlock was wearing a blue tie that did his plum-coloured shirt no favours, a woolly waistcoat completely at odds with the silky texture of the shirt's fabric, and a dusty black jacket that clashed horribly against his sleek black trousers, which I only then noticed had a scandalously low waistline.

"Good Morning, Mr. Holmes," said Inspector Hopkins, as he regarded Sherlock curiously. "I didn't realize you already had a guest."

"Pray remain in your seat, Inspector," said Holmes, mischief twinkling in his grey eyes. "Hopkins, let me introduce you to my cousin, Sherlock Holmes. Sherlock, this is Inspector Stanley Hopkins from Scotland Yard."

Hopkins' jaw dropped in the wake of this statement. Sherlock gave the young police officer a brief smile before resuming a more saturnine expression.

Hopkins eventually regained his wits.

"Excuse me, sir, that was most unexpected," Hopkins stammered. "Is he your namesake, Mr. Holmes?"

"I was christened by parents who were unaware that I had a cousin who would later become famous," said Sherlock smoothly. "Please excuse my state of dress. I'm afraid my own has met an unfortunate demise in the chemical experiment I've been assisting my cousin in."

I privately marvelled at the ease in which Sherlock preemptively deflected Hopkins' scrutiny. The Inspector, to my dismay, _had_ noticed the incongruity of Sherlock's attire, but his sense of discretion prevented him from mentioning it. The excuse that he was borrowing Holmes's clothes due to an unfortunate accident was a perfect cover.

"So what has brought you here this morning, Hopkins?" asked Holmes, after everyone seated themselves.

"A potential murder case, Mr. Holmes," said Hopkins, as he hastily drew a scrap of paper from his pocket. "Peter Rance is the dead man. He was forty-five years of age, and, prior to his death, a sailor by trade. A constable found him lying on the ground in an alley Tuesday morning. He first supposed Rance was a common drunkard sleeping off last night's gin, but then he noticed the dark puddle underneath the body. When the constable came and flipped him over, he discovered the man disemboweled with his stomach torn open."

Silence reigned in our rooms as we imagined the gruesome scene Inspector Hopkins described.

"How did you uncover the man's identity?" Sherlock asked, breaking the silence.

"Rance died right next to the boarding establishment he lived," Hopkins answered. "The landlord identified him as Peter Rance at once."

"I presume you interviewed the remaining boarders, once you had taken over the case," said Holmes.

"Yes, sir," said the Inspector, "and every single person told me they heard a loud yell at one o'clock in the morning, on the day Rance died. Since it was no unusual thing for him to bawl and shout when he was in drink, no notice was taken. His wife and children fled their rooms when they heard him coming, at around ten o' clock at night the previous day. Mrs. Rance told me her husband might have accidentally fallen out of the window and landed on a broken bottle."

"How likely is this?" Holmes asked.

"That's precisely the question that has been plaguing me," said Hopkins dejectedly. "The late Peter Rance was an intermittent drunkard, and when he had the fit on him, he was a perfect fiend. He has been known to flog his wife and children in the middle of the night, until the whole street was aroused by their screams. He was summoned once for a savage assault upon an old vicar, who had called upon him to remonstrate with him upon his conduct. I need not say that he was loathed and avoided by every one of his neighbours, and that I have not heard one single word of sorrow about his terrible end. Yet at the same time, everyone was quick to affirm their and the wife's innocence."

Holmes started rubbing his palms, a clear sign the case intrigued him.

"I see your conundrum," said he. "Mr. Rance, being the sort of man that he was, had no shortage of people who wished him harm. That makes every person in the boarding establishment a suspect. Indeed, there is even the possibility that Rance _had_ fallen off a window by accident, but his neighbours, who had heard his cries for help, chose not to give him assistance."

"The thought crossed my mind as well," said Hopkins. "I also considered the possibility Mrs. Rance had committed the murder, and then convinced her neighbours to vouch for her innocence. However, Peter Rance's widow doesn't appear to have the necessary gumption to kill her husband. She is a furtive and fearful soul, Mr. Holmes. You will have go far to find someone as worn out from enduring much hardship and ill-usage as she."

"What about the children?" Sherlock asked.

"Completely out of the question!" exclaimed Hopkins, looking quite scandalized, "The eldest is a daughter; a pale, fair-haired waif of a girl, no older than thirteen. The two remaining children are ten and six respectively."

"I suppose their age makes their culpability low," said Sherlock sardonically. "On what floor did the Rances live?"

"The third."

"And the rooms had actual windows?" Sherlock asked.

"Yes. I've confirmed it with my own eyes. The letter that alerted me of the case noted the open window. In my returning telegram I included instructions to leave it as is."

"Did you examine the grounds?" asked Holmes.

"I know your methods, Mr. Holmes, and I applied them," Hopkins said. "Before I permitted anything to be moved I examined most carefully the ground outside the building. Unfortunately they were cobble, so finding footprints were nearly impossible. But I found shards of glass underneath as well as in the body, and there were broken bottles scattered all around it. Thus I hypothesized a broken bottle directly caused Rance's death."

Sherlock's eyes started to glitter. "What about the blood stains?"

"There was the pool of blood under the victim, as I mentioned before, and there was blood splattered all around the body."

"How big was the puddle? And what did the blood splatter pattern look like?" asked Sherlock irritably. "Big? Small? Circular? Elongated? Don't tell me you didn't take note of this!"

Hopkins frowned as he probed his memory.

"I can't say for certain what the pattern looked like," he said slowly. "But I did note they were only present on the cobble and the lower portion of the walls boarding the alley in which Rance was found dead."

"How wide is this alley?" asked Holmes

"I didn't think to measure it, sir," said the Young Inspector, wincing when Holmes gave him a hard look. "But I can tell you that it was wide enough for a constable to pass through comfortably."

Holmes was lost in thought for some time.

"Well," he said at last, "I suppose I shall have to come out and have a look at it."

Stanley Hopkins gave a cry of joy.

"Thank you, sir. That will indeed be a weight off my mind."

Holmes shook his finger at the inspector.

"I would have given you a definite answer right now had you not failed to measure the length of the alley and the size of the pool of blood," said he. "At any rate, you should be able to draw a reasonable conclusion based on the evidence we already have. It's quite obvious."

"Transparent," Sherlock agreed.

Hopkins blinked at the two Sherlock Holmeses, looking amazed.

"Come," I protested. "This is too much. How could you possibly make a guess?"

"One needs only use his imagination," said Holmes, his eyes closed. "Suppose Mr. Rance was murdered. Then he was either murdered in close proximity to his rooms or he was murdered elsewhere. Considering his neighbors heard his last cry – the yell at one o' clock – and the amount of blood pooled underneath his body, it is the former."

"The next question to ask is: where exactly did he die," said Sherlock. "It's either in his rooms or in the alley. If he was killed in his rooms, you would've found blood all over it, considering the nature of his wound. But no, you didn't find any; you only found them in the alley. So, the alley is where Rance met his death. Obvious."

"Indeed," said Holmes, his eyes still closed, but a subtle smile upon his lips. "Now we must ask the question: in what manner did Rance meet his death? We know he had been disemboweled. You also found bottles all around the body. The scene suggests the bottle was the direct cause of death. Simple reasoning, however, suggests the cause is something else entirely."

"How so?" asked Hopkins.

"Have you ever tried to run a glass bottle through a body?" Sherlock asked. "I attempted to run a dead pig with a harpoon once for an experiment. I proved without sufficient entering velocity, the harpoon just bounces off the soft tissue, and the only way an average person can cause serious damage is to strap the body on the ground and drive the harpoon downwards. But even if you manage to impale the torso this way, you still have devil of a time removing the spear-end. Conclusion: A flimsy bottle doesn't stand a chance."

"You confirm my suspicions, Sherlock, as well as relieve me the bother of performing the experiment myself," said Holmes, smiling. "So what made an energetic gentleman like you engage in such vigorous exercise?"

Sherlock shrugged. "I was bored."

Hopkins and I wordlessly gaped at the two for some time.

"So the broken bottles may be just a blind?" asked Hopkins.

"More than possible; I would say probable," said Sherlock. "You can always experiment if you're skeptical. Just place some bottles under a third story window and throw a cadaver out of it."

Hopkins clutched his head and gazed at Sherlock with awe-struck wonderment. Holmes, on the other hand, chuckled appreciatively.

"My cousin is a man after our own heart, Watson," he said. "Will you be joining us, Sherlock, I'm sure?"

Sherlock abruptly turned expressionless as he sat absolutely still and silent. It was clear to me he was warring against a temptation he knew better than to give in to.

In the end Sherlock let out a long sigh that seemed to emerge from the depths of his soul.

"I will not, I'm afraid," said Sherlock regretfully. "I must wait for my wife to call."

"…I see," said Holmes, looking quite put-out. "Yes, you do have your obligations … But you can, at the very least, remain until the end of the case?"

"Of course."

"Excellent," said Holmes, now cheerfully rising to his feet. "Watson, if you can spare the time I should be very glad of your company. If you will call a four-wheeler, Hopkins, we shall be ready to start in a quarter of an hour."

Hopkins, who had been watching Holmes and Sherlock with his mouth slightly parted and his eyes as round as teacups, jerked out of his reverie and rather clumsily began to gather his bearings. I went to help the Inspector as Holmes went to retrieve his coat and hat. Sherlock remained in his seat, and rather carelessly took out his smartphone and started poring over it. His manifest eccentricity and air of mastery, however, seemed to make Hopkins overlook his astonishing behaviour.

"Mr. Holmes' cousin is the most remarkable person, Dr. Watson," Hopkins declared after we left the sitting room.

"That he is," I agreed.

"Was our Mr. Holmes like that when you first met him?" Hopkins asked.

I was intrigued by this question. I, too, had noticed the complex similarity between Holmes and Sherlock, and wondered what to make of it.

"Not quite, and yet, I couldn't help but notice how similar they are," I said. "I would've said it must be an inherited trait had I not learned about Holmes' ancestry during the case of the Greek Interpreter."

"I remember that case," said Hopkins thoughtfully. "Country Squires, weren't they?"

I nodded. Holmes joined us at the hallway afterwards, and so the three of us headed downstairs. Soon we were driving through the winding streets of London.

The trip was a silent one, for each person was deep within their own thoughts. Unlike my companions, my thoughts were far from the peculiar death of Peter Rance. Instead they dwelt upon Sherlock and his family, particularly his wife.

Who was this no-doubt remarkable woman, I wondered. Clearly she captured the heart of a man so similar to Holmes, whose opinion of the fairer sex is of record, and this fact alone elevated her to lofty heights in my eyes. Indeed, the more I mused over this mysterious woman, the more I was gripped with an intense desire to meet her. So strong was my curiosity, I actually considered asking Sherlock if I may view a family photograph upon our return. My delicacy, however, made me shy away from a course of action that would force another man to disclose his private details to me.

Our four-wheeler eventually came to lurching stop, and thus broke me away from my divergent thoughts.

"Cross Street, Croydon," Hopkins announced.

-oo000oo-

**Final Notes**: I am having too much fun with this story. But as much as I want to work on it for hours on end, I can't because I'm getting slammed heavily at work (I even moved to cut down my commute). Still, I'll try to get the updates posted as quickly as I can…


End file.
